"Fascinating, all of these."
Rei Hino raised a surprised eyebrow, quietly assessing the man before her. She was used to foreign tourists coming in and out of Hikawa Shrine; they mostly panted in exhaustion after hiking up the many stairs leading up to the gate of the shrine, took pictures, prayed in front of the offering box (before she calmly explained in broken English that they needed to wash their hands and mouth first at the stone wash basin), bought a charm or two, and then left. Sometimes Rei just didn't have it in her to play guide, but that mostly stemmed from her complete annoyance at dealing with the ignorance of those tourists. It wasn't exactly their fault though; she was perfectly well-aware that western countries didn't have Shinto shrines scattered about, so their lack of knowledge was perfectly understandable. However, what was so difficult about a little research using the smart phones they carried around before coming in to visit?
Not this man, apparently. He'd showed up at the top of the stone stairs with little to no sweat, grinned, and then gone straight for the stone wash basin. Rei, obscured by a large tree from his line of sight while feeding her two pet crows, had arched a slightly-impressed eyebrow. It had been a first that a stranger had managed to reach the top of the stairs without a slight grumble. A sudden, pulling curiosity had struck her and then before she'd known it, she'd circled the tree to reach her broom that had been propped up against the other side of the tree and grabbed it just to have something to hold, following the man with her eyes. The man had seemed to know more than the casual tourists she dealt with on a daily basis. He'd washed his hands and rinsed his mouth the right way, even tried to keep the perfect amount of distance between the dipper and his mouth. He'd bowed twice, clapped his hands twice, bowed once more, and then thrown a few coins into the wooden offering box. All done without a single fleck of uncertainty; as though he'd done it all his life.
And then he'd walked up to the small display counter where they had assortments of talismans, amulets, and charms up for sale. Even more miffed by her inexplicable interest in the man, Rei had had no choice but to prop the broom back up and gone behind the counter to see what he'd wanted.
He spoke perfect Japanese.
Now, as the man had his tall frame slightly bent to inspect a glass display box of Evil-Destroying Arrows, Rei continued her own inspection of him. He was likely to be only two or three years older than her, if the youthful quality to his face was anything to go by. His fair hair created an illusion of a soft halo around his head from the afternoon sun hitting him from the back. A stretch of broad shoulders blocked almost all of her view of the front yard behind him, and as her eyes trailed down his lean, yet strong forearms, his long fingers deftly turned a protective amulet over in his big hand.
Rei straightened up her stance, trying to will her heartbeat to a normal tempo. Rei Hino did not lose her composure in the presence of a man. At twenty-three, she'd never been one to turn into a blushing woman just because a mighty attractive creature of the male specimen spoke to her, and she wasn't about to start now. Not even when the man spoke flawless Japanese despite his apparent western heritage. Slightly irritated at her own reaction to the blond stranger, she crossed her arms under her breasts and replied to him in Japanese with a curt tone, "of course they are."
She had to admit though, not bumbling her way through broken English was nice once in a while. Her shoulders relaxed just a bit.
He looked up from the amulet he was holding and flashed her an easy grin.
Rei shifted on the heels of her sandaled feet. He seemed to grin a lot, judging by how easy the corners of his mouth lifted up. Friendly. Perhaps a lot of friends, too, back in wherever he came from. The charming kind, but not fake. Unlike her father.
She didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
"Actually, I'd like a lucky charm," the man continued in that smooth Japanese. He put the amulet back down in its box and Rei watched as he hovered his fingers over the neat row of lucky charms, plucking one out. "This one, right?"
Rei caught herself before a scowl made itself known on her face. He'd caught her off guard a handful of times already; first showing up at the shrine with minimal sweat, then knowing his way around the shrine, and there was his fluency in Japanese, and now, no stupid questions about which ones were the lucky charms, and what was the difference between a talisman and an amulet?
Not to mention the fact that he was vaguely familiar. Which was ridiculous, in any way, no matter how you look at it. Rei Hino didn't really care much for giving anyone she encountered a second glance, let alone committing their faces to memory. If she were being just a bit vain, it was mostly her who got third, maybe even forth glances from strangers. Maybe he was a celebrity that she'd seen on TV in passing?
The little voice in her head quickly shut that idea down. He's not, and you very well know it.
Snapping out of her reverie, she realized that she'd been flitting her gaze over his half-shadowed face while he had been waiting for her response, so she quickly schooled her facial expression back into her default setting: slightly intimidating, cool flatness. "That is correct." Not being able to resist, she added on, "You must have done your research."
Her apprehension spiked when his seemingly-permanent grin turned into a gentle smile. He bashfully looked away. "I wouldn't call it a 'research'."
"Then what would you call it?" she knew she shouldn't have, seeing as normally she wouldn't bother striking up conversation with buyers, let alone trying to keep the conversation going; but there was something about him and what he'd just said that had baited her to do both.
"I'm sure you have better things to do than listen to some foreign stranger prattle on about how he can tell a talisman and an amulet apart," he deflected kindly.
There was something whirring at the back of her mind, like a static gap in between songs on a playing cassette. It nagged and nagged and nagged, and Rei grew more and more frustrated with keeping her expression neutral while desperately trying to figure something out. Why did his words sound familiar?
Who was this man?
Before Rei could open her mouth with something as equally dismissive to say, he turned his head and jerked his thumb toward a massive frame filled with ema−wooden prayer tablets, on which one wrote down their wishes and then hung it, along with other people's wishes−across the yard from where they were. "How much is one of those?"
"A hundred yen," Rei answered stiffly.
"Then I'll take that one as well," he fixed his gaze once again on her, and calmly continued, "I'll have to try anything at this point, I'm afraid." His eyes were unreadable to her. That, complete with his cryptic words, for some reason, only served Rei to grow even more restless, but not the kind of restlessness that screamed stranger danger; it was more like she found herself having a hard time stifling the strange need to fire him question after question so she could figure him out.
But she had to restrain herself. She was acting so out of ordinary, which confused her as to why, and she couldn't have that.
With squared shoulders, Rei injected what was left of her daily abundance of calm indifference into her motions as she silently reached over to a small table to her right and slid a tablet with an image of a green dragon painted on one side out of its row. She thought of his flawless Japanese, and immediately wondered about his kanji-writing ability.
As if reading her mind, he beat her to it by rubbing a hand along the back of his neck and chuckled, "Can't say that I can write kanji well, so I'm going to need a little bit of your help on that front for the tablet."
"I'm not supposed to know what you write," Rei was quick to inform him, mostly because she feared if she got even a glimpse into this man's life by jotting down his dreams and wishes, it'd only fuel her burning curiosity more than necessary. It was hard enough to keep it at bay as it was, so obviously she didn't need the extra temptation.
"I don't mind," he gently told her. "That is, if you don't mind helping."
There was a small, tiny hint of challenge to his tone; and Rei couldn't help jerking her chin up at that. "Why would I mind?" Damn this man. If he thought he was getting the upper hand, then he got another thing coming. She mentally scoffed. To hell with staying out of his business; she was going to show him just how unaffected she was by him, and if it meant that he willingly let her, a shrine maiden, who was clearly a stranger to him, know what his deepest desires were, then that was his own choice.
"In that case, I will be very grateful."
As she tried to keep her simmering anger to a minimum, Rei flipped her hair, crouched down and produced a black marker from a cabinet under the long counter. Feeling his gaze on her back, she knew he was following her to a round table by the big frame on the other side of the massive yard that he'd pointed at earlier, where at least a hundred and fifty tablets scrawled with various wishes of a bunch of people's were hung, held together by a string of red thread for every seven or so tablets.
After setting the tablet down on the table top, she bent over and held the tip of the marker poised on the blank surface of the tablet, all set to work on inscribing his prayer.
"Well?" she impatiently threw over her shoulder.
There was a few seconds of silence before his voice, warm as the sunlight peeking through the thick leaves of a camphor tree, carried his wish to her ears. "I pray that the beautiful shrine maiden I've met twelve years ago in this very shrine, who treated the scrape on my neck, will someday remember me."
Rei froze. And then she whirled around, and there it was. Something that she hadn't realized was there earlier, but now, her eyes seemed to know exactly where to fix upon.
A light scar marred the left side of his neck.